But why would anyone give a 5 star review just because they're asked- just to be nice? I know I wouldn't. If they're anticipating rewards on their next trip (a room upgrade, a free meal) it's against the TOS.

I'm actually happy to see the investigation in the UK- there have been complaints for a long time that hotel owners can't get malicious reviews posted by the competition removed- and that when they ask that the property be removed completely from TA, the answer is No. The property owners should have a route to remove reviews that are attacks by someone who posts one review and is never heard from again.

The result if any of the UK ASA investigation though will be that TA won't be able to advertise that they have "genuine" reviews. Not sure it will actually have much impact, but it does at least further publicize the obvious high level of fake reviewing going on

There are sites here people will post what they will do for you for five or ten dollars, and are often littered with ads like this (actually taken from one site)

I will write a Tripadvisor review for your hotel or restaurant for $5

This is a great way to increase your presence on one of the most popular travel planning websites out there! Get higher on Tripadvisor's popularity index. I will write one positive review on Tripadvisor for your hotel, restaurant or other tourist destination. The review will be well thought out, customised and detailed. In this day and age, travellers are using Tripadvisor in record numbers when planning their vacations! Don't get left behind!

or like this

I will post 3 rave reviews for your business to Yahoo, Google, and InsiderPages for $5

Or to the review site of your choice (no Yelp or Amazon reviews at this time).

I can post reviews you or your customers have written or I can write reviews (approximately 100 words each) myself. If I am writing the reviews, please mention keywords or scenario that you would like me to mention in the review. The business must be listed on the review site you'll be reviewed on. If you include links, I can expedite the order. 1 business per gig.


Some days half the things people will do for five bucks is of the "write a review" type.

I post to tripadvisor and other sites, but when I'm looking I realize that a good portion of the reviews are probably fake, generated by semi pro reviewers.

It doesn't have to be deals like this, companies like reputation.com have pages like this one

http://www.reputation.com/how_to/rem...s-from-google/

with instructions to places on controlling their online reviews, and how to remove or dilute negative ones.

There was a time when tripadvisor and all the otherw were simply honest reviews, but that time is well behind us now.

Wow- that's sad, especially since I write real ones in my own words. I still use TA (in fact, we're heading for the #1-ranked B&B in Hermann, MO this weekend and based on last year's visit they deserve it), but I'm going to read the reviews even more carefully.

I think any high volume internet site will experience these type of issues.. fake reviews..

TripAdvisor incidental information
 

I agree that the issues which have been raised are definitely problematic and seriously detract from TripAdvisor's usefulness, especially fake reviews.

But I still look at it before booking, especially in places I have not visited before to get the incidental information reviewers sometimes include. Often that is useful stuff and can't be found on hotel or travel agent websites. It can be of more interest to me than what ranking travelers gave the place or even whether they liked it or not. (I travel a lot in China; second and third tier cities.)

For example: (These are not actual quotes) No small restaurants or convenience stores nearby. Hard to find a taxi on that street. Across the road from a shopping mall. Noisy road construction out front where they are building a subway. Major hotel lobby renovation underway, don't accept a room on the lower floors. Airport shuttle bus stops right next door. Wretched breakfast, don't take the room rate that includes it, you can do better on your own just outside.

I could really not care less if someone gives a rave review of Sally in the nail salon or rants about Tom the lazy bellhop. Every now and then something useful turns up in the body of a review. I realize this has been said before; but what it means that TripAdvisor needs to be used in a different way. It is not an all-purpose tool.

I will add one funny one though.

When we were looking for a place to overnight for an early flight in Rome, several of the reviews of some of the airport properties included things like, quoting from one

There are packs of wild dogs near the hotel towards the bus stop so walking around is a "hazard" .

There were quite a few that mentioned it, we stayed in another area.

Raw information like this is absolutely useful.. and take one post with a grain of salt.. but with multiple posts accross the board about an idiosyncracie, will help make a better choice..

I've picked some real nice places to stay, on absolute deals (on my own research) through raw information presented on www.tripadvisor.com

I read the reviews with a grain of salt. I mostly read the bad reviews first. I've also written reviews of places I've visited and I write truthfully, assuming most others do, too. It's pretty obvious that some hotels/motels/inns ask others to write a good review, or they write them themselves.

We sold our B&B a few years ago. A few months later, I came across it on tripadvisor and read the very first review by a woman who we know and consider our friend. I knew she didn't write that review and asked her the next year when I saw her. She said she didn't, so that leaves just the new owner to have written it.

If theres only a few I don't trust the reviews, if it appears too good to be true I check sources. Still, it can be faked.

Yeah, I found the quote cordelli cited particularly disturbing because it mentioned "scenarios" you could include in the fake review order. I always look for details because many of the phony reviews are vague. Now I'll have to contend with comments like "Chef Maurice's lobster timbales finished with pineapple-wasabi glaze were to die for" and "I highly recommend the anti-jet lag massage in the Spa" in trying to figure out what to believe.

Did the new owner write the review in your friends name? Is that possible.:eek:

I find that new hotels will have sparse reviews.. and I tried a HIX in Houston that was brand spanking new, but not rated that highly..

Checking in, it was new everything, and we had fantastic stay.. on Pointsbreak 5,000 points per night.. awesome value..

Tripadvisor in with the shilling?
 

Well, I have to report our last experience w/TA, because it's truly egregious. We had to change a previous booking because of a last minute minute change in plans. There was an upcoming big convention in the city where we were staying, so we sort of booked blindly a place that was # 5 in TA's ranking (didn't have time to read all reviews in depth). Unfortunately, it was a complete dump (yes, we expected a budget place given the rate, but we had much better for similar rates, and the many drawbacks were not mentioned in most reviews). Later we read their reviews a bit carefully, and it appeared that most were shills. Also, while there, we encountered a guest "helping out" at the reception computer, typing away for long stretches.:rolleyes:

So, after we came home, we decided to post our review on TA. It wasn't complimentary, so the owners contacted us twice to try to convince us to retract it. The second time they contacted us, they actually did so from the account of one their earlier shills!!!

Armed with this evidence, we contacted TA (for the second time, I should say), and asked them to please expose this property as shilled. I figured we'd soon see their red warning box (has anyone ever seen that in reality?) on the hostel's page, but the only action TA has taken so far is to ERASE FROM OUR LIST THE MESSAGE THAT THE PROPERTY SENT FROM THE SHILLING ACCOUNT (we did make a screenshot, however). The dumpy hostel (definitely not a hotel) is still ranked in the top-ten and there is no red warning box.

Now, to me that means that shilling is absolutely tolerated at TA, perhaps even encouraged, because it creates additional "user-generated" material, and any post is a good post as long as it raises the numbers. :mad:

I now feel I can write TA off as completely useless. I'll make sure to share my TA experience with as many people as I can, and I'll try to stick with hotels that are part of international chains, hoping that some minimum standards will be met (yes, I know, Choice and BW aren't very reliable). And when it's time to book in places where there is no well-know int'l chain, we'll go back to Lonely Planet and Rough Guide (I know, there are drawbacks to their top choices as well). What a pity, it's rare that a web site offering true user-generated content is a successful as TA, but at this point they must have decided to kill the golden goose, as it won't last if it continues like this...

honu, I really do feel sorry for your experience, but could it be you're overreacting slightly? I've had some bad experience with hotels which called themselved "Leading of the World", and which had 90% good non-faked reviews, and I had good experience with hotels getting only 60% good or very good ratings. TA isn't about the perfect world, but usually more kind of a guideline. And it's not only about hotels, but restaurants and places in general. I keep trusting TA for some generic reviews, and most usually I've not been disappointed. A few times it wasn't as I expected from it, but going for the local gem and getting dissapointed once every 10 or 15 times is well more worth for me than staying in some Hilton or Starwood properties every single time. Plus, I've been dissapointed from them more than once, too. It's just that TA shouldn't be your only source, but a valuable tool in your decision. I'm running well on this way, and so far, TA never deleted any reviews from me, even if I really gave a bad rating for a property which does reply on ratings of it's hotel&restaurant.

I believe TA has been spun off from Expedia (as a friend who works at TA has now moved to Boston to continue to work for them).

Has anyone noticed a decline since the change in management?